Talk:Mars
Articles worth noting Next Stop Mars Issue 18 of Cosmos, December 2007 by Richard A. Lovett Martian Terraforming You're right that a magnetic field is required to keep the atmosphere, otherwise anything we pump into the Martian air will just be blown away. It turns out, though, tht\at Mars DOES have a magnetic field, though not nearly as robust as we have on earth. So, the problem then is to augment the existing field - which seems to me a much more do-able thing. Imagine a deliberate "China Syndrome" where we deliberately melt down a reactor to re-animate the Martian core. Imagine still that the reactor is LOCATED at the Martian core, and is so large it melts the iron core, and thus generates a larger and more effective magnetic field. Once the "small" item of a magnetic field is achieved by your reactor.... You hopefully don't require oxygen immediately, so the first priority is to generate carbon dioxide for photosynthesis factories to work with. Carbon Dioxide is already the largest component of the atmosphere, along with nitrogen. Weak as the concentrations of these elements are, it is encouraging that they are there, as that tells us they are native to Mars, and Mars WANTS to an atmosphere. The soil contains a lot of carbon dioxide, so that is where we will start. Heat generated by your reactor will be applied to prying gases from soil and rocks, which have already been gently heated to extract and save the water as it is much too valuable to be wasted on the planetary atrmosphere at this early stage. Water extracted from the soil will at first be a scarce commodity, and will be needed for future agriculture and human consumption, so it will be stored until needed. Over decades - for this is a long-term project and not one for those who require immediate gratification - the atmosphere will become more CO2 rich, and we will be able to begin farming lichens, mosses, and other high-altitude "crops" which will begin to produce oxygen. In short order, high-altitude earth bacteria (or custom-made "designer" bacteria from the laboratory) will be able to add methane and other greenhouse gases. As we create greater stores of water, it can be used as media for growing algea, which is a super oxygen generator. The water will likely be sealed in shallow, broad aquariums with enough room to collect and pump out the resulting oxygen. Whatever is not used by human and animal Martian immigrants, can be added to the atmosphere. In only a hundred or so years, the atmosphere on Mars should be substantially thicker. Not thick enough to live without breathing assist, but thick enough to survive without preasure suits. In a few hundred years, I can imagine humans walking around in an atmosphere that is as thin as that at the top of a large mountain. Not comfortable for those who are not aclimatized, but survivable. We will adapt. In the event that reanimating Mars' magnetosphere proves beyond our technology, then it is possible that we could simply ignore that problem and resign ourselves to a perpetual atmosphere generation project. It is only a technical problem to to solve: How to produce AT LEAST as much atmosphere as the solar winds strip away, perpetually. The problem with that is obvious: Mars has finite resources, and sooner or later there would be no more viable native material from which to extract gasses. By that time, we would hopefully have transitioned into a class 1 civilization (able to exert effective control over planetary bodies) and be able to drag some asteroids to Mars to strip for spare elements. And while we are hauling asteroids around, we might as well drag some celestial icebergs over as well, and begin the process of forming large seas or even oceans on the now-warmer planet. If we eventually graduate to a class 2 civilization - able to exert control over stars and entire solar systems, then terraforming Mars would seem like child's play. If and when we reach that level of domination over nature, then we will be able to create designer worlds at a whim. Moving planets into and out of the green zone at will, and becoming the deciding force - as opposed to chance - which decides the makeup of a star system. At the point we become a class 3 civilization (able to exert effective control over entire galaxies), then there is no need to fret about terraforming planets. Such activities would be regarded as quaint technologies of distant history. We will have access to plenty of naturally occurring "type 3" or human-habitable planets. When one reaches the end of its life, we simply pack up and move to a new planet around a different star, with little apparent more effort than it takes to move from one city to another today. Indeed, we would be at the stage of customizing entire solar systems for fun and yuks - just to see what different types of life we could create. Now lets back up and re-address the magnetosphere issue again. Let's assume that the task of re-animating Mars' magnetosphere is beyond our abilities, and we never reach the level of a class 1 civilization. This does not mean Mars colonists would be forever relegated to living underground. While generating a planetary magnetic field is a huge issue, creating a magnetic burst is not. If we can detect a solar flare or other radiation event, then we could respond with a directional magnetic burst - EMP - between the sun and Mars that could deflect the solar event as effectively as our magnetosphere does. It might be more practical to form a defensive line with successive bursts that re-direct the solar disturbance around the planet. The problems with this scenario are scale, not technology. 04:24, December 1, 2012 (UTC)